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26 n e w h a v e n B I Z | S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 2 0 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m INNOVATORS & ENTREPRENEURS McGhee's focus is creating a Mars habitat E ntrepreneur Nicholas Mc- Ghee, who founded Mars Incubator at New Haven's Make Haven, spent this summer on his sailboat, a vacation that has parallels to living on Mars. "So much of this trip has been an exercise in planning, engineering, exploration and problem-solving," said McGhee, during an interview on his 33-foot sailboat in Camden, Maine. at was one of the stops on his sailing excursion that began July 1, and ended mid-August. "From building a seaworthy boat, to managing food, water, and fuel supplies, to managing a healthy crew dynamic, and handling an epidemic, I'm constantly learning about challenges the first explorers of Mars might face," he said. e 33-year-old McGhee, who has a master's degree in mechanical engineering, knows something about what it might take to survive on Mars. His company won third place last year in NASA's 3D-Print- ed Habitat Challenge, which had participants build a 3D model of a habitat that would allow astronauts to survive on the Red Planet. Mars Incubator is a team of engineers and artists formed to compete in the NASA Centenni- al challenge competitions. More specifically it works to develop the technologies and inform the de- signs that will one day lead humans to a sustainable presence on Mars. NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge was a unique experience, he said. "e biggest challenge was that we were limited in the type of ma- terials we could use. ere are only so many resources on the Martian surface to build with, so it took months to figure out a technique, including testing our theories by actually laser melting basalt rock and fibers," he said. "Once we had a materials concept, we took a couple months to come up with a design, and then another week to produce the informational video for submission." He says it's possible his model could be chosen as the Mars hab- itat, but what is more likely is that his company will be contracted by an organization to share knowl- edge to expedite the process of living on the Red Planet. NASA or SpaceX, the private aerospace manufacturer founded by Elon Musk, will be looking for help in figuring out how to safely land on Mars, he said. "It's been pretty challenging creat- ing a business around space flight, in part because there are a lot of com- petitors in the running," McGhee said. "ere's not a ton of money but a lot of people want to do it." Even if he had deep-pocketed investors to make improvements to his model, the technology isn't here yet for such a habitat to be shipped to Mars, he said. "e transport issue is the big- gest hurdle to solve. e heaviest object we have sent to Mars is 2,260 pounds," McGhee said. Space engineers will need to figure out how to launch much more weight than that for a successful manned mission to Mars. He used to think humans would be able to land on the Red Planet in 2030, but now he surmises it will happen a few years later than that. McGhee has always been inter- ested in space, but didn't realize he wanted a career in the field until his sophomore year in college. "At the time I was going to school for graphic design," he said. "I wasn't very good at it, and felt I was much more inspired by science and understanding how things worked. I decided I wanted to figure out how to make a trip to the moon work. Mars is now more on the forefront of my interest because it is much more conducive to supporting a sustainable habitat, primarily due to the fact it has more gravity than the moon, but also because of the thin atmo- sphere, and surface materials." McGhee says he's intrigued by space because he loves exploring. "I think it's in our nature to ad- venture into the unknown, and to me, Mars is the ultimate unknown for our generation," he said. "Build- ing a civilization on the next planet is a challenge at the very extent of our grasp." Another way McGhee has been learning about living in space is by helping Yale University build a regenerative habitat on imble Island. is is another project that will add to his company's knowl- edge base, something that would make Mars Incubator appealing to an organization like NASA or SpaceX. "For me, it was an opportunity to build at human scale and in a remote environment analogous to the remoteness of space," McGhee said. "Like on Mars, we had to understand the demands for elec- tricity and for water and figure out ways to accommodate that." Aer coming up with a design for the imble Island structure, he and a team began construction on it in mid-August. n By Karen Ali Nicholas McGhee at Somes Sound in Acadia National Park in Maine, with his boat in the background.

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